Conservatives pick and choose on rights

It’s hypocritical for conservatives to invoke the Second Amendment for protection against government tyranny while allowing warrantless spying, indefinite detention and secret drone strikes on Americans, says Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.

Jay Jochnowitz

12 Responses

They’ve been picking and choosing Bible verses for years, endlessly quoting passages that support their agenda, even using them as justification for hatred, while completely ignoring the parts that stand in contrast to their agenda. This is no different so should not be any kind of surprise to anyone.

Very well said ReepDaggle. I think that is the most maddening part of the fundamentalist agenda, cherry picking. That level of hypocrisy seems to be catching up with them. The extreme right wing theocrats are increasingly becoming marginalized. With Fred Phelps as a face of Christian extremism, who wouldn’t want to marginalize them.

All you have to do is visit the Liz Lemery Joy blog to see how far theo-fascists will go to play to the supposed “my brother’s keeper” Jesus they tout, while at the same time touting the “I’ve got mine, and to hell with the rest you” Tea-party mentality, that TOTALLY contradict each other, and yet, somehow their heads do not spontaneously explode. .

Close Gitmo- Still Open
Stop Rendition- Still doing it
Close all CIA Black Sites- Still use them
Drone Stike on Americans ?? Only happened once and Obama ordered it.
Warrantless Eavesdropping- Still doing it
indefinite detention- Yup, you get the point now??

So maybe if conservative and liberal leaders agree with these techniques there must be something to it. We just don’t talk about them anymore because your guy is in office.

Yet the liberal mentality of falsely claiming to believe in free speech fails when others do not agree with what the lockstep progressives believe. If someone has the temerity to disagree, then they are labeled as extremists, or theo fascists, or some other equally useless dismissal of another adults opinion. We can go through on how each Democratic or Republican, Liberal or Conservative politician sells his soul, flip flops(Or evolves in the case of BO), or otherwise changes a position to find favor with a populace who only wants more for himself and not care about the nation.

Stephan – It is not so much limiting what you believe as it is being able to exercise our beliefs without having to filter them through the religious fundamentalism and clenched butt reality, the Right seems so insistent to force on us all. The difference is that your beliefs leave no room for the rest of us to exist within our ethical parameters without limiting them, when you, under our beliefs are not constrained to personally live by yours. This of course does not apply to the absurd, like having 300,000,000 million fire-arms flowing freely in a society that has only 312,000,000 citizens, but in our reality, you are free to worship whatever silly god concepts you choose (or have imposed on you as an impressionable child) to subscribe to, you are free to not have an abortion if you so choose not to, and no one is holding a gun to your head to force you to marry someone of the same sex. In OUR reality, you do get your choice, just not the right to impose your narrow choices on the rest of us.

“Yet the liberal mentality of falsely claiming to believe in free speech fails when others do not agree with what the lockstep progressives believe. If someone has the temerity to disagree, then they are labeled as extremists, or theo fascists, or some other equally useless dismissal of another adults opinion. ”

And yet, despite the name calling, they never once tell you that you had no right to express your opinion. So where does the supposed liberal denial of free speech come in, because your example sure wasn’t it.

And for the record, don’t even try to pretend that name calling about an opinion you disagree with goes only one direction. You know as well as I do that it goes both ways, though admitting that doesn’t really help your (non)argument , does it?

Well Stephen, I guess society will just have to grant you a special dispensation so that you, and only you, get the choice to decide what you will and will not pay for, while the rest of us get to be hung out to dry over financing resource wars like Iraq, the money corporate America takes in corporate welfare, and a military so bloated and expensive, that it is larger than the next 10 nations defense expenditures combined. You want your cake, and the ability to eat it too, or are you just that ‘spey-shull’ that logic can be abrogated to serve your narrow clenched butt reality?

Stephen,
Without question, every taxpayer in America can name numerous ways in which “their” money is being spent on things they disapprove of. Too bad!! Taxation isn’t a buffet where you can pick and choose who gets your money and who doesn’t. You can have a say in whether family planning gets “your” taxes as soon as I get a say in whether an unnecessary war is paid for with “mine”. Stop whining.